or at least the death of what we know and love about public HS sports is coming.
baseball is the first to go...and it's happening now... travel ball, scout teams and Perfect Game (https://www.perfectgame.org/), in that order, have made public HS baseball nearly irrelevant. College coaches don't scout HS games anymore. Since the season coincides with their own season, why would they when they can see the best prospects out there at pay-to-play Perfect Game events, or they can just bring scout teams from around the region to visit their school for a "camp" (basically a tryout, usually have other schools there looking for players as well).
I can't even tell you how unimportant HS games are now to people involved in baseball. It's killing HS baseball... it's already killed Legion baseball by making it completely irrelevant, Legion has relied on the HS structure of baseball, and was THE place for coaches and scouts to recruit... not anymore.
Perfect Game has a damn monopoly on hyping kids and getting them scholarships, or pro contracts...players are missing early-season HS games now to play in PG events or other events being held during the early season... it's sad.
Basketball is right on the heels of baseball because of AAU... still, you do see coaches at HS basketball games, but that's only because the rules allow it so they have to do it... and basketball is very important as far as revenues go (at the college and even at the HS level)...so recruiting budgets will keep coaches coming to HS games.... but it won't last forever. The best players, eventually, will look at HS as too much of a risk. It'll be just the borderline talents, and unconventional players that will take HS seriously... the best players will go to prep schools or anywhere else that they can better themselves for their future.
The stronghold, football, is heading down the same road as baseball and basketball. It's becoming a year-round sport.. which is unbelievable to me... but it's happening. 7-on-7 events are being held at every major university in the country after the HS season and throughout summer... which is making multi-sport players quit other sports if they wanna play football... and then your top players are camping at events all throughout the year. Still, football won't slip as fast as the other sports because there isn't off-season games being played at AAU events or anything like that... but the concussion & other injury issues could speed up the death of HS football.
Every sport is following the models above... I can't imagine, going forward, HS sports ever being as strong as they've been the past 50 years because of this. Soon they'll just be too much of a financial drain and too much of a distraction (PC culture issues, dying interest from youth, parents, etc...) for public schools to sponsor sports. I hate to be prophetic, but its going to happen.
baseball is the first to go...and it's happening now... travel ball, scout teams and Perfect Game (https://www.perfectgame.org/), in that order, have made public HS baseball nearly irrelevant. College coaches don't scout HS games anymore. Since the season coincides with their own season, why would they when they can see the best prospects out there at pay-to-play Perfect Game events, or they can just bring scout teams from around the region to visit their school for a "camp" (basically a tryout, usually have other schools there looking for players as well).
I can't even tell you how unimportant HS games are now to people involved in baseball. It's killing HS baseball... it's already killed Legion baseball by making it completely irrelevant, Legion has relied on the HS structure of baseball, and was THE place for coaches and scouts to recruit... not anymore.
Perfect Game has a damn monopoly on hyping kids and getting them scholarships, or pro contracts...players are missing early-season HS games now to play in PG events or other events being held during the early season... it's sad.
Basketball is right on the heels of baseball because of AAU... still, you do see coaches at HS basketball games, but that's only because the rules allow it so they have to do it... and basketball is very important as far as revenues go (at the college and even at the HS level)...so recruiting budgets will keep coaches coming to HS games.... but it won't last forever. The best players, eventually, will look at HS as too much of a risk. It'll be just the borderline talents, and unconventional players that will take HS seriously... the best players will go to prep schools or anywhere else that they can better themselves for their future.
The stronghold, football, is heading down the same road as baseball and basketball. It's becoming a year-round sport.. which is unbelievable to me... but it's happening. 7-on-7 events are being held at every major university in the country after the HS season and throughout summer... which is making multi-sport players quit other sports if they wanna play football... and then your top players are camping at events all throughout the year. Still, football won't slip as fast as the other sports because there isn't off-season games being played at AAU events or anything like that... but the concussion & other injury issues could speed up the death of HS football.
Every sport is following the models above... I can't imagine, going forward, HS sports ever being as strong as they've been the past 50 years because of this. Soon they'll just be too much of a financial drain and too much of a distraction (PC culture issues, dying interest from youth, parents, etc...) for public schools to sponsor sports. I hate to be prophetic, but its going to happen.
